Chennai: Devanur Mahadeva, one of Karnataka’s most revered intellectuals who continues to lend his voice for the rights of marginalised communities in the state, will be conferred the Vaikom Award, instituted by the Tamil Nadu government to commemorate the centenary year of the struggle to allow people lower castes to access streets close to a temple in Vaikom.

An admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and B R Ambedkar, the 76-year-old will be presented the award by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin in Vaikom town in Kerala on Thursday where he will inaugurate a refurbished Periyar Memorial and Periyar Library.

The Vaikom Award carries a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh, a citation, and a medal.

The Vaikom Satyagraha, in which E V R Periyar played a key role, is considered a watershed moment in India’s history which gave birth to several such movements for people from all castes entering temples. After the struggle, people from all castes were allowed inside the Mahadeva Temple in Vaikom.

Mahadeva, a Sahitya Akademi award winner and a recipient of Padma Shri which he returned in 2015 due to rising intolerance, is a staunch critic of the RSS and BJP and has received several death threats in the past from right-wing organisations.

His 60-page book in Kannada, RSS: Aala Mattu Agala (‘The Depth and Breadth of RSS), published in 2022 and translated into English narrates the divisive agenda of the RSS and the BJP’s communal politics. The book has been translated in many Indian languages like Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Urdu, Marathi, and Hindi and has been well-received wherever it was published, including in Karnataka.

“Devanur Mahadeva is a great writer and a social activist. He has keen interest in people’s struggle with regard to their language and has fought against caste-based atrocities and discrimination,” the Tamil Nadu government said in a statement, announcing the award.

The book quotes from the writings of M S Golwalkar, Veer Savarkar and Keshav Baliram Hegdewar, who shaped the ideology of the right-wing organisation, to show how they justify the caste system and speak against the Constitution and federalism.

Mahadeva was one of the first writers to “return” their Padma Sri awards to the Union Government in 2015 in protest against “rising intolerance” in the country after a Muslim labourer was lynched for allegedly consuming beef.

“RSS: Aala Mattu Agala’ is an experiment in decentralised publishing,” Mahadeva had told DH in July 2022. Born in 1948 in Devanuru village in Mysuru district, Mahadeva has been fighting for the upliftment of marginalised communities, including Dalits.